Category Archives: Products

iPhone, Products

Getting “No audio files” in your car stereo with iPhone?

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Recently, I was surprised by a “No audio files” issue that prevented me to push any sound to my car stereo system using the USB cable. It was working fine before and It works fine by Bluetooth, but in a car with Waze or other mapping tools and music playing without charging is bad.

Context

  • √ It was working great before
  • √ iPhone works fine with Bluetooth
  • √ Other iPhones work fine, so no problem with the car stereo
  • X I can get power with connected through USB, but no audio is playing in the stereo.

The problem

After a few weeks, I decided to dig a little bit and look for the issue and do some tests.

I found that for car stereos, connecting through USB is really like a USB, the device needs to have media, and that on iPhones means music in the Music App. So, my problem was that I offload the Music App on iPhone, so no more media was available for the connection. After plug the iPhone it gets an error on the car stereo.

During this analysis, I found that other issues can happen with your connection of your iPhone with your car stereo:

  • Your Music App isn’t installed or active
  • You don’t have any media in your Music App
  • Your cable is damaged and won’t charge or play music

Note: If you have car play, probably you won’t get this issue. This is for simple car stereos.

I found this issue on a Nissan Qashqai connecting an iPhone X with iOS 14.6, but saw similar issues on Mazda car stereos and other iPhone versions.

The solution

Make sure your cable is in good shape and you have Music App with some music on your iPhone.

Applications, Opinion, Products

MIDI to MP3 Converter & Shareware Software

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While searching and testing for good technical posts, here is another opinion one. Today I was searching for free software for convert MIDI to MP3. Yes, the old MIDI files because I want to have music in a website but I don’t want to violate copyrights. Then I found a website that has some free music with authorization to use. However they are, some of them, MIDI files.

Every time I search for a software to use one time or rarely, I’ve lots of problems like the lack of freeware to do it, shareware software that are commercial but work worst than free solution, and, the most “pain in the ass” the software classified as shareware that don’t fit the term shareware and don’t allow us to use it, allowing only convert a percent of the file or convert but don’t save the result.

Hopefully there are some companies and some products that don’t take us for fouls and don’t want money to use one time or to really test the software. In my journey to convert a MIDI file to MP3 I found the product Easy MIDI Converter from AudioTool.net. They allow us to convert 30 files, in a maximum of 5 in the same time, with good quality and a very simple interface without to configure hundreds of options like other solutions. It solved my problem. Despite I don’t want to buy the software I liked it and went to its website and I found some other cool features. This is what I think that shareware is for.

Thanks to AudioTool.net

Opinion, Products

Amazing thin notebook

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Recently Apple has presented MacBook Air. This amazing thin notebook is a really good piece of work and proves that we can do better in many technology matters. I always listen all people say, Japan is known because they can take a product and reinvent it. This time, Apple shown that they can reinvent. They’ve transformed a standard notebook in really portable device maintaining all its key features by exploring and rethinking the existent and tested high tech.

Greetings to Apple for its good job and its amazing product. Now I hope that other great notebook manufacturers like Sony and Toshiba, that I like pretty much, follow the example.

Here stay this amazing thin computer.

MacBook Air - Thin notebook

See more on Apple website

Operating Systems, Products

The Story of the new Laptop

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Well here i was, just finished arriving home, minding on my own business, after a stressful ride home from university,when the delivery enterprise arrived with my new laptop, a brand new Toshiba L-40, all wrapped up in a nice box.I took it out ,with the help of my cat, and turned it on, so far so good.Windows Vista and every thing,just one little problem…it came with a very very gay theme, that i couldn’t take out, my solution…recovery CD, simple, effective, and for my surprise it was fast! i thought to myself “less work for me”,but(and there is always a but, as far as my not so vast experience in the computer tech world) as soon as the windows was fully booted i noticed the never ending number of programs running on start up.

Curiosity took me to see what every application did.So i had a Toshiba infoCenter,desktopSms, a trial version of Norton(that not even was enabled),and a few more things that i don’t recall right now.So i got my self busy preparing my new, fresh out of the box, laptop.Started out by running msconfig and unchecking those programs, that i didn’t like to see that much, on the startup.Next went to the program manager and uninstall Norton and every thing else that i didn’t like. Ok so i got myself a Windows Vista ready for my activities.

But why stick only with one O.S. when u can have two!! Fetched my ubuntu 7.10 distro slipped it on the dvd-rom tray and rebooted the laptop.

A new installation started…so i thoughted.To my surprise it did not start installation has it was supposed to.It was a LiveCd, which it is great, always useful when a person is in a tight situation, but it was not the case, at the moment i needed an installer.So i started thinking ” i was sure i selected the Start & install option in the start menu of the cd”… and i did! there it was right in front of me this big icon saying INSTALL i putted two and two together, and there it was the O.S. install interface.

Pretty simple it was, just select the language, the keyboard layout, the partion(even has automatic option, but i prefer manual), ok on the partition department i like to divide my disk in 3 parts (/home,/ and swap) and the type of partition “ext3″(dunno why i choose this one maybe cause its always the first one on the list,need to investigate this).With the partition business done, off to the account config, full name just for info on the system(don’t need this but i like to be picky sometimes), account name! ok here i always choose a small name in lowercase mode, this way its easy and fast to type(here i am picky mode again), next password…no need to tell every that it should be alphanumeric(numbers and letters), more than 6 digits and don’t forget to put it in upper and lower case(can’t be safe enough =P).

Account department done, finally installation starts.Now i have Windows vista and ubuntu 7.10 with a grub loader to choose which one i want to load.Happy?! well no i still need eclipse and java to be able to do some work at my university. Ok so i go console mode, start up by making a backup of my source list (found in /etc/apt/source.list) and changing it by putting the repositories easily found on ubuntuguide.org.

Now for the best part, i have to install packages in Linux, ohhh noo it sooo hardd, i can’t do it =( probably thats what you are thinking right now, well my friend you are wrong, nothing more simple actually, just do sudo apt-get install “program”,et voila, and it does everything for you.Easier then putting pre-cooked meals on the microwave.after a few of this and i got myself a laptop ready to do some programing.

Ok so you don’t feel that much at ease with the console, no piggy the dudes from ubuntu thought about that, just use the synaptic package manager(use the menu system->administration->synaptic package manager)this is a graphic interface that does the same as apt-get and a little more. After all this i finally was happy with what i got,for now at least.Lets see how long will take me to blow up this two O.S.(my record time was 48hours with windows xp =x).

-I finish this Post with a nice picture of the Toshiba L-40 with his very interesting original theme.

Toshiba L-4o with not so good theme

ps-Forgot to mention, but i got this laptotp trough a deal from the local school, therefore the theme…

Applications, Products

Play MOD movies made with a JVC camcorder

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Some time ago I bought a JVC camcorder that writes in an HDD or an SD card. The camcorder is great and has a magnificent image and sound quality, even if compared with some 5Mb digital cameras.

However when we try to see the movies that it produces face a problem. The camcorder record movies in a MOD file that is, in fact, a MPEG2 encoding. This way we can rename the MOD file to MPG and get the movie playing. The rename action couldn’t be the solution. The problem is that MPEG2 is a format that is not supported by default by some operating systems. For example, i have a Windows XP with the software that the camcorder bring, the Cyberling Power Director, and i can manage free my movies but when I’ve only my laptop with Windows Vista with me i couldn’t see the recorded movies. The solution is to install a package with the correct codec in Vista. I installed a Vista Codec Package and it starts working ok.

When you have the software (Cyberlink) that read MOD files you only have to used it and convert the movies to a more supported format. This software allows the user to make a complete movie with the recorded scenes. This can be done by getting all MOD files, select those that we want and produce a movie in a AVI or MPEG1 formats.

When you don’t have this software you can rename the MOD file to MPG and see it. Don’t forget to install the correct codec to play it. In some cases, the file doesn’t play at all or it can only be without sound.

This is not proved and it’s my own experience trying to play and produce my videos.